LAUSANNE: Olympic president Thomas Bach has encouraged new FIFA president Gianni Infantino to waste no time pushing ahead with reforms of the scandal-scarred world football federation writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

Bach addressed FIFA Congress in Zurich last Friday when he urgent the 209 national associations to vote for positive change to rescue the organisation from its image-battered depression.

A package of comprehensive reforms was adopted before Infantino, the 45-year-old Swiss lawyer who had been general secretary of European body UEFA, was voted in as president in succession to disgraced and banned Sepp Blatter.

Infantino defeated a challenge from Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, a close associate of the Asian Olympic movement powerbroker Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah.

New leadership

Bach, speaking after an IOC executive board meeting in Lausanne, said: “I am sure that the new leadership of FIFA will implement the reforms approved by the congress last week.

“We have further noted the determination of president Infantino to implement all these reforms with regards to ethics but also with regard to good governance.”

Infantino, like previous presidents of the world’s No1 sport Blatter and Joao Havelange, is expected to be voted in as a member of the International Olympic Committee at its session [congress] on the eve of the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games in August.

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